Before I get started, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Aaron Sanders, I am a 21 year old male from a town of about 20,000 people called Pampa, located in Texas. I like to spend my free time listening to music, playing guitar, video games, reading books about the human mind, researching, and learning. I have dreams of being rich and famous so that maybe I can work towards improving the quality of the human race, helping people, donating money towards people who actually need it. Basically just trying to make the world a better place. Personally I am disgusted with this world and all the horrible people in it and I believe it's time for a change. Where I'm at right now, my dream looks like it won't happen, but I'm hoping that maybe this MMORPG Idea will be the key in helping people, that and I also think this game would be a really great idea.

Now I know a bunch of people are here posting their "great" MMORPG ideas here in hopes of hitting it big and famous and becoming uber rich so they can spend the rest of their lives playing their video game in solitude and celibacy. I too share this same dream, only without the celibacy.

My game idea doesn't have to be restricted to the xbox 360, but I would prefer that it be started there if I can ever get my game idea to take off, also the game would require that your xbox 360 controller has an attached keyboard, or at least a regular ol' usb keyboard plugged into your 360. We are all here hoping that we can get our possibly unique and original MMORPG ideas out there, but the chances of this happening are highly unlikely. I do have to admit, I'm skeptical about putting my ideas out there because I, like many people, truly believe that given the chance, I could make money with my ideas and have fears of people copying or stealing ideas from me. I know my ideas may not be super original, but it's original enough in how I combine and utilize them. I have plans of adding a back story to the world you will be slung into, and have very few of my ideas jotted down on paper, due to working and personal reasons, I haven't invested much time in working out many kinks, most of the ideas are in my head, but here we go I guess..

I want my MMORPG to be a fast-paced game, filled with action, violence, secrets, and several other things. Instead of using the usual Race-Class style of character creation, I want to use a sort of "Element" based character. Take note of the fact that the word element is in quotation marks, seeing as how a couple of the "Elements" aren't in fact elements. There will be no level cap, what-so-ever, which may sound bad..but it just sucks when you have this completely amazing character, but your adventure slows down greatly due to hitting the level cap, so the rest of your time is spent on finding better armor, weapons and such. With their being no level cap, it will also become extremely hard to level as you get further up in levels, but there will be a reward given to those who show that they are not weak and powerless. Players who can manage to survive against their enemies and not die, will be given a survival XP bonus. There will be no bows or guns of any type in this game, this is due to the fact that it feels as if it would slow down the pace of the game. Each character of the game will be a battle mage of sorts, specialize both in magic and melee. You would have jobs, not necessarily classes, that you can pick from. If you wish, even change your job later to another. You can only be one job at a time, cannot change jobs outside of towns, and I haven't decided on whether or not I was going to limit the total number of jobs your character is allowed to have, though it seems wise to limit it. As a level 1, you could have no more than 1 job specialization until you hit maybe, level 20-30 or so. Equipment will level up as you use it. Equipment experience will be earned 1 per kill, and can only be earned from enemies near your level or above, as to avoid a level 50 character farming level 1 monsters for equipment experience. You can choose to allocate your EXP(We'll use "EXP" to refer to equipment XP, and leave XP be used as regular XP used for character leveling) among your weapons, armor, and such. (i.e. You have 100 EXP point, you can put 20 on your weapon, 20 on your chest plate, etc.) There will be a total of 12 "Elements" to choose from. Fire, Ice, Water, Lightning, Rock, Death, Soul, Demon, Light, Dark, and the Elemental "Race" (I know that's only 11, I'll edit this post later once I find my notebook or can remember what the other one was, I might just have to go with wind..), which will be a mixture of them all in a small way. Jobs will be beneficial mostly for their passive abilities in battle, they may have active abilities, this hasn't been decided yet. Each* Element have it's own set of of Strengths, Weaknesses, and Defenses(*Not pertaining to Elementals). Elementals will receive the most damage, with weaknesses, dish out the least in strengths, and has no defenses against the others. There is a reason for this. Here is how the Strengths, weaknesses, and defenses work, these are just quick examples. Fire-S:Ice 5%, Dark 2%, Soul 2%, Wind 1%, Elemental 6%. W-Water 5%, Rock 2%, Light 2%, Elemental 1%. P-Fire 10%, Demon 5%, Lightning 3%, Death 2%. As you see, Elementals have a huge downside, but they will get a skill with 5 levels that will take their weaknesses from 6% to 1% at level 5. Also, I'm sure alot of you will agree with me that it sucks when you have awesome looking armor, but you have to change your armor to another type just because it's better, and you hate how this new armor looks. Well this can be bypassed with the Decoration equipment window. Where you're allowed to take a piece of armor. (if you have it and are of lvl, and element to regularly wear it) place it in it's corresponding spot in the DE window, and it will show on your character, just without the benefits of the armor. So you'll have the benefits of the better armor, but look as though you're wearing the cool armor you like so much. This will also teach you one important lesson in pvp, don't judge a book by it's cover.

I still have plenty of more ideas to throw out there, I just want to post my post and get feedback. I apologize for just throwing all everything out there in a cluttered, unorganized mess, but like I said, I don't have many of my idea's on paper, I'm just telling you as I remember them.

rouncer
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2011-04-21T05:47:20Z —
#2

Making an mmo could make you successful, but what if it doesnt and noone joins, cause there is too much competition?

Maybe its not an easy victory, like maybe you think it is.

But if you still want to give it a chance, pick up a book on c and read it (if you like books about how the mind works, programming should be very interesting to you, its how a computer works) use direct x, opengl, cuda, opencl, XNA, whatever, and all you need is those 2 things to do it. Oh yeh, plus a networking library.

How much programming experience do you have?

P.S. I know your not stupid, my post isnt sarcastic in any way.

ChromeGuitarist
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2011-04-21T05:52:48Z —
#3

I have no programming experience, my father is a programmer though, but he is a very difficult man to deal with, which is why I'm not readily jumping at the chance to spend time with him and learn programming. I actually hate reading, as of the past couple months though, I've been having strange cravings to..learn..and learn. I find myself researching things all day if given the chance now. Actually spending time reading "A Brief History of the Mind" and listening to some of Buckethead's soft, good songs. (If you know of buckethead, you'd know he has a bunch of horrid songs, and a bunch of really beautiful songs.*)

rouncer
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2011-04-21T06:18:41Z —
#4

If you wont enjoy learning programming, then you arent going to be making any of these games. However if you are truly an intellectual (which everyone at this site basicly is) you should enjoy picking up technical bits and pieces to help you put the game together.

Ok, your right, I should at least make the effort to try learning this stuff right? I do have one big problem that could prove to be a real road block when it comes to reading what's on that website, (haven't clicked the link just yet) which is my horrible memory lol. I can get easily annoyed and frustrated with trying to read or learn something because my memory makes it hard for me to recall things I've read, but if I don't make the effort at all, then I'm just basically giving up. I'll probably have to read over it several times before I can remember any of it, but it's better than not make any attempt at all eh? I'll admit, even with you just telling me that, at least you're helping me give me some sort of direction as to where I need to start.

alphadog
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2011-04-21T13:50:42Z —
#6

Some honest observations:

Your ideas are not original. In fact, many ideas are not truly original, and the Internet has only made this worse! But, that doesn't mean you can't create an enjoyable experience that people will want.

The secret sauce is in the execution. (And, some amount of luck.)

Forget C. I like rouncer's posts here, but on this topic, he and I are in complete and irreconcilable (B)) disagreement. The only reason EVER that you should learn a low-level language and/or build a game engine, is because you want to become an engine builder. Period. To use a carpenter analogy, do you want to be the hammer designer, or use the hammer to build a Heppelwhite armoire?

If you really feel you have a memory problem, get tested. Lots of people who think they have memory problems, don't. They just feel inadequate and lack confidence. Or, they actually aren't passionate enough about it to make it a topic of lifelong study.

Search this site for MMO posts. There's tons of advice on how to start small and build up, what MMOs entail, and such. I find it amusing that people say "I know lots of people post about MMOs, but this post is different..." and proceed to lay out yet another concept that has Warbles instead of Elves, and Widget Points instead of Levels, etc. But, different details in the mechanics are irrelevant to the best steps to getting you to your end goal of having a working, populated MMO. MMOs are big, complex beasts. Should that discourage you? No. Does that mean you should not listen to advice about the complexity of the task before you? No again.

Good luck and keep us posted on how you majestic quest is doing!

ChromeGuitarist
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2011-04-21T21:47:41Z —
#7

I'm not trying to claim my MMO idea is "great and different", it's just, I'm trying to say, look, I'm ANOTHER GUY with an MMO idea, but hear me out. Also, the best thing I can tell you about my memory is, there's alot of things I can't really choose whether or not I remember. =P If I really really want to remember something most of the time, I have to repeat it for a little bit. I can be reading a book, one that I'm really interested in, even have my attention fully focused on it, and not beable to remember the first half of the sentence I'm reading unless I go back and re-read it. If I'm extremely excited/interested in the subject matter though, usually I have an easier time remembering it.

(Back on topic) What language would you recommend I learn? I could always try learning this from my father, but he is an extremely horrible teacher, he'll probably have me practicing 1 thing for 3 years before he'll actually try teaching me a second thing. That's how it went when I tried learning guitar from him, he had me practice the same thing for 3 weeks, I got tired of it and decided I'd learn how to play without his help. Guitar would be a lot simpler to pick up on your own than programming would though, so if you guys here can help me out in any possible way that'd be great. I really need direction, answers, information, and people that might be willing to help with my ideas.

While that's the fun subject of a lot of hair-splitting, it doesn't matter. You can code a game in any language, most languages have a steep curve (some steeper than others), and a real coder knows a handful of languages. The more common ones are C++, Python, C#, Java. and Lua@ChromeGuitarist

he had me practice the same thing for 3 weeks,

Three whole weeks! OMG! I guess that's a lot of time when you are 21...

I've outlined my own 12 step program for programming. It's actually eight steps, but will take more than three weeks.

rouncer
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2011-04-22T05:03:17Z —
#9

Hey alphadog, ill never change, i always write from ground up and I also will never stop recommending it eiher!!

But alpha's right about using engines, ive seen a few examples of the use of one now, and they do take care of alot of the programming for you...